The Whiskey Baron (30 page)

“Ain’t that the truth,” Chambers said. “I remember when my youngest was seventeen. That was when he decided to follow his
brother off to Europe. Broke his momma’s heart. Mine too, you want to know the truth of it.”

“Least he had a cause. You should be proud, Sheriff.”

“I am, I am. How you doing, Shorty?”

“I’m fine as ever. Have you know I been walking straight as an arrow ever since you let me out.”

“Have you now?” Chambers eyed the tumbler of bourbon in front of him.

“I’m just here to support my buddy Joe. He’s having a time of it.”

“I was sorry to hear about Susannah’s father,” Chambers said. “How’s he doing?”

“Still hasn’t got out of bed,” Joe said. “Likely never will.”

“Jesus, fellas, the things they don’t tell you about the world.”

“Amen,” Shorty said, and he slugged the bourbon.

“Sheriff?” Joe offered him a sip.

“Thank ye.” Chambers took a swig, the liquor warm and rough to swallow, but it made his head feel better. He hadn’t realized how bad he was hurting until the smoky liquid hit his lips and relieved him.

“Hell’s bells,” Shorty said. “Don’t go hitting any flowerbeds. They’ll lock you up for that.”

Chambers took another gulp. “Behave yourself, gentlemen. And if you see Larthan, you call the precinct. I got a feeling something bad’s about to happen.”

D
epot sat at Aunt Lou’s table and watched Mary Jane’s hopes drain from his face. The man had come in planning to make a king’s ransom off his upstart liquor business, and here was Depot Murphy. Depot had missed him once with the shotgun, let the boss down, but he wouldn’t miss him again. You could count on that. The man seemed to know it too, for he’d gone pale and squeamish like at heart he was still that boy wearing mary-jane dresses. Poor man, poor man.

“Now, Mary Jane,” Aunt Lou said. “I understand you had some capital you were prepared to invest. That what you’re here to discuss?”

Mary Jane told her it was.

She nodded toward Depot as she said, “This man here says that capital don’t belong to you.”

“I earned it, and I have it, so I’d say it does.”

“And I’d agree with you, as possession is ninety percent of the law. If you’d kindly lay it on the table, this whole matter’ll be straightened out right now.”

In the darkened hallway, another man beaded a rifle straight at Depot. Tull was right about Aunt Lou. She was a loose cannon.

Mary Jane said, “The money’s hid. I came here to discuss the business before bringing anything with me.”

“Well, that changes things, doesn’t it?” Aunt Lou gripped the back of the chair beside Depot. “This man says Tull has your money, and that it’s his now, and he’s got a new business proposition for me.”

She waited for Mary Jane to speak, but at first he had nothing to say. Depot knew exactly what the man was thinking: They couldn’t have the money. How could they have found the money? What he wasn’t letting himself acknowledge, Depot saw, was that Tull knew everything. He knew when someone was trying to cheat him, and he knew when a barkeep flubbed a cleanup job. He could find some money, don’t you worry about that.

Still, Mary Jane was a stubborn one. He said, “I kindly doubt they’ve found money, and if they have, you’re doing business with some damned depraved individuals.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. That’s not a polite way to do business,” she said. She looked at Depot, who upturned his hands.

“All I know is what Larthan told me,” he said. “He says we’ve got the money, and you can count on that.”

“All I needed to know,” Aunt Lou said.

“I can’t believe this,” Mary Jane said, his head flicking back and forth between the two. “You’re going to accept blood money. You call that good business?”

It was shameful, Depot thought, a man going out begging this way. Cringing before the firing squad.

“I haven’t said anything about blood money,” she said. “All I’m doing is pointing out that Mr. Murphy has made an offer on behalf of Mr. Tull. Maybe it doesn’t matter whose money is where. Since I’ve had good and longstanding relations with Mr. Tull, I’m inclined to accept his bid over yours.”

“Now wait a second.”

“Especially since I know Tull has the money he’s offering, and you haven’t brought anything that I can see other than a promise.”

She turned and nodded at her man in the hall, headed out of the dining room.

“Hold on—”

But Mary Jane never finished. Depot raised the .38, leveled the sights, and shot him in the chest. A clean shot through Mary Jane’s heart, and black blood seeped onto Aunt Lou’s floor. She hadn’t paused when the shot had gone off, and she now stood in the kitchen doorway, lit a cigarette, and waited. Men from the hall were already dragging the body away. Depot tucked the pistol in the back of his pants.

She said, “Did Mr. Tull really have his money, or is it still hid away somewhere like he said?”

“He had it hid away, but Larthan said he found it.”

“He say where?”

“No, and I don’t think we want to know.”

She nodded. “Your boss sure does have a way with folks.”

“I wouldn’t want to wind up on his bad side,” Depot said, thinking about his meeting with Tull earlier tonight. When Tull had pulled out the .38, Depot had felt sure he was about to be shot. He went on: “Tull’s a cold man, but lots of men are. There’s something else about him I’ve never been able to put my finger on.”

“Didn’t you know, Mr. Murphy? He’s the Devil, and he’s going to take us all back to Hell with him when his work here is done.”

He stared at her, and she grinned and began to laugh. She laughed so hard she choked, and then she quit laughing and put the cigarette back in her mouth. He left her there and drove the two hours south to Castle, haunted by her words and contemplating that she herself might be the Devil. Heat lightning flared through the cloudbanks and lit up the sky like the northern lights. He passed through the piedmont, where the corn was at its tallest, waves of it like a sea of dark by the side of the road, the rural pavement gray and gravelly, the night some vortex in which he saw strange reckonings. Wind and shadows and leaves upturned. Insects smacked into the windshield.

B
y the river, Tull eyed the Hopewell brothers and tried to figure out his next move. He and Evelyn couldn’t just leave now. These boys were involved. But if he killed them, he wouldn’t be able to take her with him. Too many dead, and on the run she would be a liability. Even without them dead she might be trouble. Shouldn’t have tied her to the bedpost. That left her and Quinn Hopewell against him, when what he’d intended was to separate her from Quinn and garner some space. Now that all of them were out here together, he couldn’t very well shoot the boys in front of her, and he couldn’t shoot her too. That would go too far, even in the manic state in which he now found himself. But what would be better, her dead or her abandoned to the Hopewells? If he simply left now? If he turned and walked away, free again in a way he hadn’t been since he was young and shacking up with Esmerelda in a whorehouse? Twenty years and he hadn’t gotten
anywhere. Richer, yes, and his bloodline passed along, yes, out of his control now, but his soul was in the same place. Stagnant. Or maybe he’d made a wide loop—childish dependence to adolescent rebellion to freedom as a young man, and now back again, with a dependent child in his middle years, rebellion as his daughter grew, freedom as an old man. Time one wide loop of turn and return, only this return like a half-life, his body and soul bruised from the pressure of all the years.

And where was his family? Gone, long since he’d left them, just as now he was about to leave his daughter. His parents long dead, his brother old if still alive, some other Tull lineage. Larthan’s soul was an orphan, abandoned to an indifferent universe by an uncaring God, the mystery of life in the grave, his father dead in a field, his mother dead from fever. And maybe once the loop reached an end, and Tull himself became one again with the earth, all the mystery would be revealed. Until then, he had to keep moving forward like an engine along its track, the last switch long past, the next somewhere in the hazy curves ahead.

He stopped in a clearing, where the moon and the starlight shone against their ashen faces. He said, “All right, everybody. Let’s stop here.”

The brothers halted. Evelyn clung to the elder, and her eyes cut into Tull from the darkness. Late, almost morning, but still no sign of dawn in the east. Soon Depot was supposed to meet him at the train station and get his payoff before going home. He didn’t know Tull was planning to catch a train, but then, Tull hadn’t known it either at the time. Depot’s business in Charlotte should be over now, and with any luck he’d be across town right now, taking care of Mary Jane.

“I’m not going to kill you boys, but if you’ll kindly set down, I’ll cuff you for the night. Evelyn and I are getting on a train in a few hours and we’ll be off. I’ll make sure someone comes along to get you in the morning. Shouldn’t be but a few hours.”

“I’m not going,” Evelyn said.

“What?” he said. “Yes, we’re going.”

Wind rattled the trees around them and sucked the air toward an unseen thunderhead that marred the stars. She said, “You can go, but handcuff me here, too.”

He’d half expected her to resist, so he reached over and took her by the arm, yanked her to him. What he didn’t expect was for the younger Hopewell to have a knife, and for the knife to be jammed into his side like a snakebite. He didn’t feel much at first, just the pressure against his rib, and then the knife glanced beyond the bone and into the heart of him. The damage registered before he felt any pain, the knife two inches deep into his right side, Willie Hopewell backing away with spooked wide eyes and Evelyn pulling away as well and then the pain struck.

Tull jerked and reached for his daughter, caught hold of her dress and yanked her to her knees. Quinn leaped in and wrenched her from his grasp, and Tull stumbled, felt the handle of the knife. The pressure sent an electric current along his nerves so that everything hurt and the tips of his fingers throbbed until his hands were numb. He howled and sank to his knees, reached for his gun in the dark grass, the boys wrestling with him and Evelyn somewhere in the melee. He opened fire with the rifle—pow!—and his ears rang after the shot. Nothing stirred in the woods around him. Then he was running. He tumbled through the forest, the knife still in his side, and with each step he felt as though he were being sawed in half. Each step cut away at more flesh. He grew woozy. He fell in the darkest grove between the river and town, reached around and pulled the shank from his side. Blood puddled onto his shirt, a sopping mess, and he took off his undershirt, folded it, pressed it against his side. He paused a moment, nearly lost consciousness, but something stirred and drove him onward. He woke and took his belt and wrapped it around his torso, pulled it tight with the shirt against the wound, fastened it. He put his jacket back on as he continued through the underbrush. Finally a quiver of dawn on the horizon, another day to contend with. He moved on.

W
illie lay in a heap of pinestraw and groundcover, ferns and ivy and baby oaks around him. He’d been shot in the leg and had lost consciousness when it was still dark outside. Now the sun flamed across the sky and lemon light glared at him through the forest, created a patchwork of tawny shadows around him, ochre and olive green. Quinn lay beside him, knocked unconscious by the butt of Tull’s gun, but no bullet had entered his body, no tears in his flesh. Just a swollen knob on his temple, already strawberry colored and growing darker, which would cause the vision of his left eye to blur on occasion for the remainder of his days.

Neither Evelyn nor her father was anywhere in sight. Willie rose and looked at his leg. The bullet had grazed his calf and the blood had already clotted and crusted over the wound. Leaves stuck to his legs as he stood and limped to a small rise by the riverbank to scan
the forest and the water. He saw her there, prone on her back in a pool by the river’s edge, half submerged in the water. A bullet had gone straight through her heart. Her white dress clung to her skin and was translucent in the water and stained red on her chest. Above the wound, though, her skin was pale and had a bluish sheen that made her look so peaceful, so calm. Her hair a tangled mess in the water, the skin on her throat white and smooth and soft. There was something profound and mysterious about her body there, bobbing as the dark water seemed to carry off her soul like some provision of grace left to the world.

Willie scrambled away from the river and into the forest. When he ran out of energy he stopped and shouldered against a birch tree and threw up on a spot of mossy earth. Later, when the sheriff found him there, he would ask the old man if there was any way to escape this feeling. Chambers would tell him, “If there was, I wish I knew it. You just do what you can to endure it.” For now, though, Willie breathed in the scent of fecund soil, gasped for breath, and began to weep. He would be thirteen in less than a month.

A
pounding woke him up, and Chambers saw that he slept in his car in front of the station. Pink light clouded through the windows, and glue stuck to his eyes and blurred his vision. Once again, someone beat against the window. He opened the door and saw Jeffreys and O’Connor standing there.

“Mary Jane Hopewell was shot in Charlotte,” O’Connor said.

“His body was found near a dumpster by a paperboy,” Jeffreys said. “Rolled up in a sheet and left sitting up against a wall.”

Neither agent seemed particularly interested in why Chambers had been asleep in his car, nor did they seem surprised. He stretched his back out and looked up the street. Dawn light bled over the south end of Main, a purple stain like wine on white fabric. Chambers still had cracked glass in his mind from the night before. A hangover, his first in a while, and he knew from experience that it would only get worse in the next few hours.

“We know Aunt Lou is involved, and we already have agents at her house now to question her. We think we might catch Tull and Depot Murphy at the train station directly.”